I'm either missing it because I have shitty timing, or missing it because it's not happening. But when is the best time to be on to test combat? And how much longer might we have until we open for realsies?

I have two forces by my side,
One's the truth and One's a lie
Which one's which I cannot tell
This Enigma is my Hell

Onasaki wrote:I'm either missing it because I have shitty timing, or missing it because it's not happening. But when is the best time to be on to test combat? And how much longer might we have until we open for realsies?

I've been on at mostly off-peak times during the week (when I'm not at work) but also a bit on the weekends, roping in people who sign on. For reference, I am usually on from about 5 hours later than this post on a weekday for a few hours.

It's getting closer to release that's for sure. I need a little bit more testing and development first because of the aforementioned mostly-being-on-off-peak-during-weekdays-itis because undoubtedly the game will go down a fair bit if I don't do that.

The lay of the land is ripe right now. Every RPI out there is in a decline or dead, this community wants something fresh. When we thought lab mud was opening last may we had dozens here chomping at the bit to get into something new. PLEASE rescue us Japeth. I'll have your next baby for you.

Very very slow progress over the last few weeks as our son has been/is teething, sucking up any precious moments of free time as well as most of the sanity. I have done a little bit of bugfixing related to some private testing on the limb severing stuff but yeah. At the moment I would do just about anything short of murder someone for a solid half an hour of uninterrupted time to work on FutureMUD. I haven't even had time for the usual things that distract me from working on it, it's been that dire.

Programming is very much about getting in "the zone", you just cannot chip away at it with interruptions. When our kid is just a little bit older and can amuse himself a bit more rather than demanding our every second of attention, I will go back to being more productive.

This comic is my life right now, except the manager guy is a baby or urgent chores that need doing in the few moments of quiet:

Sorry if I've been a bit quiet. It really is impossible to develop at home with a kid of this age. As Wolfsong mentioned, I've been promoted into an office at work now, every office worker's dream to escape the cubical bank.

My job has a lot of times where I am waiting on something to happen or when I get ahead of what needs to be done. Now that I have an office where nobody can see my screen, that means I can fill that time with development rather than staring at my emails, heh.

In the week I've been in there so far I've already managed to get a bunch done, so we're back on track.

I'll let Japheth answer that in more detail, but the new forums are a by product of the server migration.

Edit: While I'm chiming in, though, I'll mention that we're aware the MUD is down currently - can't bring it back up at work yet, but it should be back up in a few hours with the benefit of a few additional patches to make it more "user friendly" - in particular in group combat situations.

On both critical things that need to be in code, general stability of the MUD, and building required to open, we have been rapidly ticking things off the list over the last 2 months. I have been able to get a large amount of coding done at a rate I haven't been able to match since early 2014 when I was coding on FutureMUD nearly fulltime at work while I waited to switch into a new role.

As some of you may be aware there is now a guest arena open - north from the guest lounge. Here you can load up weapons, armour, medical supplies and NPCs to fight. This is actually the best way you can help me at the moment; since I opened the guest arena, I have found a great deal more critical crashes and fixed them. Additionally, this helps more people get familiar with how combat works and these people will be important to teach others because there ARE some important departures from the RPI Engine. Also as a bonus I get more and more feedback on balance issues (although I think I'm starting to zero in on a good balance).

One unfortunate thing is that a major change a few months ago actually made old applications stale and I will need everyone to redo their's. My plan is to (in the near future, when I am ready) reject everyone's applications and send out an email explaining the pending release and the guest arena. I'd then want to do an approximately 3-4 week "Bug and Balance Blitz" where you guys try and break the hell out of the game and work out kinks in balance, which I'd work through.

We'd then be fully ready to open, and would do our planned grand opening event from last year.

Realistically the MUD is ready, and fleshed out in a way it wasn't a year ago, I'm just not 100% happy with the stability yet. Being as I can't currently boot the MUD during prime time hours (when I am at work), I want to get it a teency bit more stable so people aren't missing out during prime playing hours.

I'd also like to mention that the switch to a windows server means I have better debugging capabilities (in particular my code now gives me line numbers of things it crashes in...which is...unbelievably amazing). So every time you find a crash you're helping me get closer to release.

It's good that the game's going to be stable enough to release soon! I just wanted to let you know that, I'm still around, and still poke my nose into the forums every now and again. I can pretty much guarantee that when you open this game that several people will come back, and some of them I'll drag back by the hair, feet, and toenails if I have too.

Looking forward to seeing this running!

I have two forces by my side,
One's the truth and One's a lie
Which one's which I cannot tell
This Enigma is my Hell